Aldo automatically tamped back the reflexive burst of fury. It hadn’t been his business. When she stayed, he accepted her choice. She wasn’t his to defend and protect. “I ask myself that every day. The deployments made it easier to think about something else. Gave me something to focus on.”

They’d also given him an escape from what happened the first and only time he’d done something about Diller. The price paid hadn’t been his. And that haunted him to this day.

Aldo drummed his fingers on the roof of the truck. “I gotta say,” he said, changing the subject. “I’m thinking about retiring. This is number four, and I want to make it my last.”

“Really?” Luke asked, sounding surprised. To Luke, the Guard and the deployments were what kept him going, kept him trudging one foot in front of the other.

“We’ve been doing this since high school. That’s twelve years of packing up and moving out and hoping we come back after the job’s done. I’m ready to stay put. I want to put more time into some engineering projects. And then I want to make a nice girl the next Mrs. Moretta.”

“Jesus, Aldo.” Luke sounded shocked…and a little sick. “When the hell did you decide all this?”

They’d enlisted together, trained together, deployed together. This was the first time Aldo’s course had diverged from Luke’s.

“About ten seconds after I found out Gloria moved out.” It was the truth. It was time. Aldo felt it in his bones. He was ready to be a full-time civilian, a husband, maybe a father. It was time for the rest of his life to start. “Don’t tell me you’re not ready to hang it up.”

“It’s all I’ve got,” Luke said quietly. “The Guard and my business.”

“You’ve got your family and could have Harper, too, if you wanted. Come home to that sweet face every day and find out what trouble she got herself into? There’s something to look forward to.”

Luke’s lips quirked. “She is trouble. I’m concerned about releasing her into the wild.”

“She needs you.” And that was what Luke needed most, someone who needed him.

“She needs her fucking parents, but they’re dead. She’s got no family. Just scars from all those years in foster care.”

Aldo swore. He knew Luke well enough to know the man wasn’t talking metaphorical scars. What was it with fuckers hurting women? “And you’d do anything to make it better, but you don’t know how to help,” he surmised. Aldo was well acquainted with that brand of helplessness.

“Exactly.” Luke gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles went white. “Fact is, I just don’t have room in my life for her.”

“You’ve got the room. You’re just too chickenshit to make it.” Checkmate.